BIM Education Through Problem-Based Learning Exercise: Challenges and Opportunities in an Inter-Professional Module: Fid-Bau Portal

BIM Education Through Problem-Based Learning Exercise: Challenges and Opportunities in an Inter-Professional Module

Shikder, Shariful

Building Information Modelling (BIM) has become an integral part of the UK construction industry since the enforcement of the government’s BIM mandate in 2016. However, one of the biggest challenges of industry-wide BIM adoption is the shortage of BIM skills. Higher education institutions also face the pressure to update their curriculum and education methods within the compact architecture, surveying and engineering curriculum; and it is claimed that there is a lack of knowledge of BIM pedagogy. Hence, the need to evaluate existing teaching methods and exploring opportunities for the future is necessary. Existing literature suggests that project-based education is widely used in construction and engineering education, and also adopted in BIM education.

In this study, based on the constructivist learning principles, a problem-based learning (PBL) technique was applied in an inter-professional studies (IPS) module to explore opportunities for BIM education. The IPS module was not dedicated specifically for BIM education; however, in this project, the aim was to identify the prospect of inter-professional group projects (problem-based learning exercise) as a method of educating BIM among the architecture, surveying and construction management students. The results show, although the students developed a better awareness of the BIM process and standards, collaborative group activities were not intuitive to follow the principles of BIM. Also, the use of specific BIM tools/application was not used by most of the students. Previous experience of using BIM-specific software was lacking among the students, and most of them did not want to learn new software in a short period. The results also identified that the students did not feel that the group projects encouraged them to learn about the collaborative working environment. Based on these findings, this study developed a set of recommendations to incorporate BIM principles throughout the module. Findings from this study would be beneficial to set discipline-specific learning outcomes to promote BIM education.